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Our work at Ethonomics is concerned with joining ethics to economic decision-making. This is to achieve an appropriate balance between the two (see detail here).

We have created this website as part of our ongoing project to:

• acknowledge the environmental and social costs that the economy generates, the unsustainability of this, and the unfairness of those costs being borne by those not benefiting from the economic processes concerned;

• analyse these costs and identify the historical, structural and behavioural reasons why they exist; and

• propose solutions tailored to the reasons identified.

We have spent time exploring and analysing this ground, focusing in on four key ideas. These have led us to our proposed solution. We believe that this solution for repairing environmental and social ills will not only benefit those who are the obvious losers in the economy. We believe that it will also enrich the lives of the better off: it will enable them to bring back ethics into their work and other economic interactions in a rewarding and more balanced way.

Our work is fundamentally about capitalism. We define capitalism here to be the situation where people’s decision-making behaviour in the economy and society is based narrowly upon financial priorities. Capitalistic behaviour can be contrasted against behaviour that would encompass a broader set of values, balancing ethical dimensions appropriately alongside financial considerations. Note that capitalistic behaviour can either be because of deliberate intent, or because no other choices are available: this distinction runs through our work (see behaviour vs structure).

We believe that our ideas are necessary to achieve the right balance between ethics and financial considerations in the economy and society. We propose ways of adapting free markets or of opening them up to adaptation by ethically-motivated market participants.

Content here should be viewed as an impressionistic sketch of elements in this field.

Please contact us for greater detail in any area or with any questions, comments or suggestions for improving the site: we value your input and time in corresponding with us. Please also post comments at the bottom of individual pages.